You never know for sure either what will come out, that may be a suprise too. It's certainly big, I wonder if someone was carting away garden waste & it fell off the trailer. It's odd to be in the road otherwise.

carting away garden waste & it fell off the trailer. It's odd to be in the road otherwise.

Because the quarry is a mobile home site we all have combined path/roadway outside front gardens ... I know that some privet hedge trimming has recently been carried out towards the top so HM's leaf litter could well have been disturbed! The neighbour who found it is the same guy who brought me the Elephant HM caterpillar a couple of years ago which successfully pupated & overwintered in shed til it emerged following April/May!

I can remember in our first house over here, over 25 years ago, that we witnessed the Privet Hawk Moths emerging out of the lawn, (which had been a field til we mowed it). I've looked it up & the book says they pupate deep in the soil, so it must have been some kind of deep diggings or groundworks going on. Some dead bushes being dug up? From the photo it certainly looks right for PHM.